One in five mobile phones to feature NFC by 2012

OPINION: Licensing deals signed by Innovision will see NFC functionality being built into 15% to 20% of the handsets shipped in 2012, says the company, as leading mobile phone chipset manufacturers look for low cost ways to add NFC into mass market mobile phones.

Both ABI Research and IMS Research, meanwhile, have produced new five year forecasts of the NFC market. While both forecasts differ widely — IMS says 785 million NFC chips will ship in 2015 while ABI forecasts a more cautious 300 million — it’s becoming clearer every week that NFC is now very much here to stay.